Next week, Cheap Trick’s Budokan! will be released – a 3 CD and one DVD box set documenting Cheap Trick’s breakthrough album, Live at Budokan. I’ve always preferred the indispensible In Color and Heaven Tonight because the space in Tom Werman’s production undercut their arena-ness and made the songs move with a little more elegance. Still, the live version of “I Want You to Want Me” put Cheap Trick on the map.

The live DVD of the show from 1978 is the box’s selling point, with Robin Zander looking like a real rock star in a white satin suit. Within an album or so, Rick Neilsen would become simply odd with the multi-neck guitars, a weirdo beard and a bulky belly under a black jacket; at this point, he’s merely manic in a red sweater and ball cap with the brim flipped up. The songs are slightly simplified and muscled up here, and the audience screaming really doesn’t stop. All in all, it’s a pretty cool document of a band that can barely believe it’s getting the Beatles treatment.

The CDs are remixed, reconfigured versions of the material. The Jack Douglas remix is valuable because the album was originally done on the cheap, never meant for American release. One disc presents the whole 19-song show in its original sequence, while two discs present the same show, same mix but with the song sequences of the 20th anniversary reissue of the show as a two-disc set. I guess that makes it possible to listen to initial album as it was originally released, only with better sound and a slightly expanded songlist, but it really doesn’t seem cost efficient to me. I’ll watch the DVD or listen to the whole show.